Category: News and Notes

Items of note related to technology and teaching.

Initial Podcast from Tech Matters 2007 – Building a Metaphor for Your Site

In this podcast, I capture some of the voices of TM07 as we prepare for our first dinner together and then move through the “Building a Metaphor for Your Site” activity. (Pardon some of the recording problems as I am getting used to my new Sansa Express MP3 Player/Digital Voice Recorder.)

First, I attempt to interview Karen McComas and Paul Allison, and try to find out what Tech Matters is and what it means to them. Then, Peter Kittle, our gracious host, reminds us that we are talking about “geek stuff with like-minded idiots,” at least the facilitation team. For Paul, he talks about community and connection. And Karen reminds us of the transformative powers of TM.

After dinner, we began the activity, led by Chris Sloan and Betty Collum. I first talk to Susan Martens-Baker and Cyndi Dwyer about their ear of corn, who discuss the “golden corny goodness” that is Nebraska, ready to pop out.

I then move over to John Bishop and Paige Cole, who did a very (very) interpretive piece of finger painting. They describe it better than I ever could.

Next, we moved into articulation groups, and I met with Amanda and Garth Cornwell from Lake Michigan as well as Cheryl Canada and Terri Godby from Mid-Ohio. We were asked to come up with our gist (that, gist, G-I-S-T) statement. Amanda discussed how LMWP is on the verge of some changes while Cheryl and Terri discuss how they feel their site is still invisible to local teachers, hidden behind a mask.

Finally, we took a few minutes to interview our teammates and ask questions about things that resonated with them in the larger discussions as well as what they want to explore during the week of TM. So, I was able to listen in with Lavon Jonson and Sonja Mack from Crossroads. They talked about the idea of a statewide tech network in Michigan and finding out more about the many tools that people were talking about.

This was a great introduction to the group and provided a fun start to a busy week. We are looking forward to begining bright and early tomorrow, some earlier than others.

Reflections on "Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops”

While there are many things on which I could comment in this article, I want to focus solely on the image that readers see when they first view it. Take a look at this for a moment, and then think about the implications of this image on school laptop programs, regardless of the discussion following it in the article.

Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops – New York Times

So, there are at least two reactions that I could have to this. One reading could be to look at it the way in which it was intended. The second gives me more pause.
The first reactions is, of course, to just look at the headline, read the article, and say, “yup, laptops are a waste of time.” Any kid who is more worried about drinking and Godsmack must be doing something bad with his laptop, right? These kids are having too much fun with this laptop to be “learning” anything (at least, what most of us envision “learning” to be, as associated with school). Also, the young lady in the picture has the look of “Oh, what are they doing now?” Combined, the composition of this pictures suggests lewd and, if not illegal, at least immoral activity going on with these two boys and their laptop escapades.
Granted, the caption of the picture does mention the fact that these students are at lunch, which implies that that should be on free time that they can use in their own way. But does that really matter? Given the headline, it is clear that the rhetorical affect of this image supports the conclusion that laptops are a worthless investment.

The other reaction is to simply, “Yes, you are right. The laptops are a waste of time indeed.” Now, what makes me say that. Well, despite the interview with Mark Warschauer, author of “Laptops and Literacy: Learning in the Wireless Classroom” that shows up on page two of this article — and all the potential positive effects that laptops could have, the article ends on a disappointing note.

But in many other classrooms, there was nary a laptop in sight as teachers read from textbooks and scribbled on chalkboards. Some teachers said they had felt compelled to teach with laptops in the beginning, but stopped because they found they were spending so much time coping with technical glitches that they were unable to finish their lessons.

So, concluding that school hasn’t really changed much in the past 150 to 200 years, and that laptops are bound to have technical glitches that keep them from being used as tools in the classroom, we conclude that they are worthless. Beyond the issues of teacher professional development related to technology that I could talk about (and is mentioned in the article), what I want to suggest here is that part of the problem is that the reason so many computers are broke is because students aren’t expected to take care of them.

Could it be that the reason they are being broken is because the students aren’t taught how to download, install, and update virus and spyware protection? Could the reason that they are being broken is because students are leaving them in their lockers and book bags more than they need them in class? Could the reason that they are being broken stem from the fact that kids try (and succeed) to do everything to subvert filters and locks that they ruin the computers in the process, rather than be put in charge of properly maintaining them?

I feel that this article — as well as the issue of laptops in schools — is being explored from a one-dimensional model of schooling where the teachers/administrators are supposed to prevent all disruptive behavior before it starts and that kids, essentially, don’t have to take responsibility for their learning. These are issues bigger than just professional development and advocating for School 2.0, although those are definitely part of the discussion.
Instead, I think that we need to consider talking to students about how to take care of the technology that is supposed to sustain them in school. We don’t like gum under desks or scribbles in textbooks, and we teach students not to do that (and, if appropriate, discipline them when they break those rules). Is it possible that we are not teaching students the ethos of computer ownership, from taking care of hardware to being a good online citizen? Perhaps that is a side of the issue that we could look into more fully in future research.

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Reflections on “Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops”

While there are many things on which I could comment in this article, I want to focus solely on the image that readers see when they first view it. Take a look at this for a moment, and then think about the implications of this image on school laptop programs, regardless of the discussion following it in the article.

Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops – New York Times

So, there are at least two reactions that I could have to this. One reading could be to look at it the way in which it was intended. The second gives me more pause.
The first reactions is, of course, to just look at the headline, read the article, and say, “yup, laptops are a waste of time.” Any kid who is more worried about drinking and Godsmack must be doing something bad with his laptop, right? These kids are having too much fun with this laptop to be “learning” anything (at least, what most of us envision “learning” to be, as associated with school). Also, the young lady in the picture has the look of “Oh, what are they doing now?” Combined, the composition of this pictures suggests lewd and, if not illegal, at least immoral activity going on with these two boys and their laptop escapades.
Granted, the caption of the picture does mention the fact that these students are at lunch, which implies that that should be on free time that they can use in their own way. But does that really matter? Given the headline, it is clear that the rhetorical affect of this image supports the conclusion that laptops are a worthless investment.

The other reaction is to simply, “Yes, you are right. The laptops are a waste of time indeed.” Now, what makes me say that. Well, despite the interview with Mark Warschauer, author of “Laptops and Literacy: Learning in the Wireless Classroom” that shows up on page two of this article — and all the potential positive effects that laptops could have, the article ends on a disappointing note.

But in many other classrooms, there was nary a laptop in sight as teachers read from textbooks and scribbled on chalkboards. Some teachers said they had felt compelled to teach with laptops in the beginning, but stopped because they found they were spending so much time coping with technical glitches that they were unable to finish their lessons.

So, concluding that school hasn’t really changed much in the past 150 to 200 years, and that laptops are bound to have technical glitches that keep them from being used as tools in the classroom, we conclude that they are worthless. Beyond the issues of teacher professional development related to technology that I could talk about (and is mentioned in the article), what I want to suggest here is that part of the problem is that the reason so many computers are broke is because students aren’t expected to take care of them.

Could it be that the reason they are being broken is because the students aren’t taught how to download, install, and update virus and spyware protection? Could the reason that they are being broken is because students are leaving them in their lockers and book bags more than they need them in class? Could the reason that they are being broken stem from the fact that kids try (and succeed) to do everything to subvert filters and locks that they ruin the computers in the process, rather than be put in charge of properly maintaining them?

I feel that this article — as well as the issue of laptops in schools — is being explored from a one-dimensional model of schooling where the teachers/administrators are supposed to prevent all disruptive behavior before it starts and that kids, essentially, don’t have to take responsibility for their learning. These are issues bigger than just professional development and advocating for School 2.0, although those are definitely part of the discussion.
Instead, I think that we need to consider talking to students about how to take care of the technology that is supposed to sustain them in school. We don’t like gum under desks or scribbles in textbooks, and we teach students not to do that (and, if appropriate, discipline them when they break those rules). Is it possible that we are not teaching students the ethos of computer ownership, from taking care of hardware to being a good online citizen? Perhaps that is a side of the issue that we could look into more fully in future research.

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Link to "Multiliteracies Meet Methods” Article

The article that Jeff and I wrote for English Education got a mention in a recent NCTE INBOX:

Teacher educators can find useful strategies in the English Education article “Multiliteracies Meet Methods: The Case for Digital Writing in English Education” (TE). The article provides a rationale for teaching digital writing and explores the rhetorical, interactive, and pedagogical implications of such teaching.

Quick, grab the PDF while you have free access to it! 🙂

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Link to “Multiliteracies Meet Methods” Article

The article that Jeff and I wrote for English Education got a mention in a recent NCTE INBOX:

Teacher educators can find useful strategies in the English Education article “Multiliteracies Meet Methods: The Case for Digital Writing in English Education” (TE). The article provides a rationale for teaching digital writing and explores the rhetorical, interactive, and pedagogical implications of such teaching.

Quick, grab the PDF while you have free access to it! 🙂

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Visions of Online Learning

Are we, as educators, approaching this in the right way?

To deal with the growth, the University of California is launching an extensive effort to make sure applicants’ online high school courses are on par with traditional classroom instruction.

More students across US logging on to online classrooms – The Boston Globe

To be honest, I am not sure that I want online courses to be “on par” with traditional classroom instruction. While I do not want to get in a finger-pointing, name-calling game, the fact of the matter is that “traditional classroom instruction” is becoming more and more a relic of education’s past, not a model to emulate.

Moreover, what is it about the “online experience” that makes it an online experience? If it is simply listening to video versions of lecture and completing the same homework assignments that have been given year after year with Word or Excel instead of a pencil, paper, and calculator, then we are going about it all wrong.

Shouldn’t, instead, the purposes of online learning be to engage students in reading and writing tasks that require multimedia authoring, collaboration with others with whom we typically would not or could not work, and engagement with materials that are fresh, relevant, and contextually useful to one’s own inquiry?

This is not to say that there is not a place for some traditional “content” in online learning. However, my experience as an online instructor was one where I simply monitored students as they were supposed to work independently through a prescribed set of curriculum. One of our coordinators called it the “nag and brag” version of online teaching, only to touch base with students when they did something wrong, fell behind, or did a great job on something.

This, to me, is the failure of our current paradigm about online learning. We do not need to replicate traditional classroom experiences. Instead, we need to think about what it means to engage with content and collaborate with others in ways that will both catch the attention of and expand the abilities of our students.

I hope that Michigan, as the first state to adopt an online learning component, is able to move beyond the traditional visions and be, instead, visionary. Perhaps we are moving in the right direction.

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Collaborating, Cooperating, and Co-opting

So, I have finally caught up on my RSS reading. Sort of. I keep getting side tracked and have been looking at two collaborative tools — Zoho Writer and ThinkFree — that I\’ve known about for awhile, but came up in my reading tonight. (To digress for a moment, my goal this next week is to read my feeds in Google Reader every day. We\’ll see how that goes…).

That said, I am interested in thinking more about the entire notion of collaboration that the discussions of the read/write web and school 2.0 have generated in the past year, and especially in the last month or so. It seems that every podcast that I listen to or blog that I read points to \”collaboration\” as one of the \”new literacies\” and that social networking (as a proxy for collaboration) holds such great promise in schools for rethinking the teacher student relationship, curriculum and instruction, and just about everything else.

What I find lacking in most of these conversations is a discussion of what would happen if schools do/are already co-opting some of the collaborative and social tools that students are using outside of school for classroom use. Now, this is not to say that I don\’t think that we should try (or else I wouldn\’t blog about these topics on a regular basis). However, I do think that we need to carefully consider what it means to \”collaborate\” as compared to just \”cooperate\” and what happens when we try to use tools in school that students gladly use on their own, but may (or may not) like to see in schools.

My concern stems partially from the many, many curricular documents that seem to be touting 21st century literacies and, inherent in those literacies, the idea that students collaborate. To the extent that we see collaboration happening, all the better. Yet, I don\’t know that schools encourage collaboration (where the sum is, indeed, more than the total of the individual parts) so much as it promotes cooperation (hey, let\’s get along so we can finish this project). There are many power structures in schools — from the community to the school board to the administration to the teachers to the students to cliques and types of students — that may say they want collaboration, when in fact what they want is cooperation.

This becomes problematic. When we teach under the guise of collaboration, yet all students are not expected to contribute meaningfully to the project, then we shortchange all the students working on it. We have all been a part of a group or taught a group of students who foist the work upon one or two students (or, contrarily, choose to take it upon themselves as martyrs). Moreover, there are times when group work is meant to be busywork and cooperation, not collaboration is the goal.

I don’t know that I have a strong thesis for this argument so much as I just want to express some thoughts and concerns about the current discourse surrounding the word “collaboration.” I would be curious to hear how others are interpreting that term in different contexts and to know whether or not I am thinking clearly about it. That, I feel, would be a powerful, collaborative discussion.

Engaging Writers with Interactive Genre Samples and Peer Review

The folks at UofT are at it again, and this project looks to be quite useful for writing teachers who are beginning to think about how technology can be useful for more than just web searching:

iWRITE is web-enabled courseware developed at the University of Toronto by Margaret Procter and colleagues to support the use of written assignments in courses across the disciplines. Each iWRITE site is course-specific so that it reflects the expectations in your discipline and your emphasis in teaching and grading. Thus its advice is relevant and credible.

By showing samples of past student papers along with detailed instructor annotations, iWRITE sites demonstrate the qualities of structure, coherence and style expected in written work for specific courses. The course grading criteria are included for viewing at any time. An interactive module (the Prompter) can be created to take students through the process of planning and drafting their next papers. A Peer Review function is also available for online exchange of papers.

iWRITE Web-Enabled Software

This kind of reminds me of the Model Bank examples, although the depth and breadth of classes and genres represented here seems much richer (mainly because this is college writing, not middle school). Moreover, I find the explicit focus on looking at other writing as models a great focus for this site, especially since so much concern about writing on the Internet is about copying and plagiarism. For the iWrite site, the focus seems to be on examining author’s craft in order to make one’s own writing better.

In other words, the teachers here want students to be looking at other writing, analyzing it, and learning to write better because of it. The interface allows them to do this in an interactive way, thus taking advantage of the technology to move beyond simply sharing a piece of writing but actually being able to engage with it.

I already emailed them for my temporary login and password.

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Early Language Learning: Good or Bad?

USA Today featured an article on a growing trend, as well as personal and professional interest of mine: early language immersion:

Azure Warrenfeltz is fluent in Japanese and Spanish. She also can understand bits of French, German, Arabic and Italian, and she soon hopes to learn some Mandarin Chinese.

Azure is 4 years old.

“I’m smarter than my father. He can only speak one language. Muchas gracias!” she says playfully.

In today’s globalized world, Azure is one of many young American children whose parents insist her education include foreign languages.

More children learn more than one language – USATODAY.com

I’ve blogged about this before and find the learning that my daughter has gone through this year amazing. She can carry on a brief conversation with her Chinese teacher. When we practices her flashcards (which had, fortunately, English phonetic spelling of the Chinese characters/pictures) over the holiday break, she often was correcting me. “Dad,” she would moan, “you aren’t saying it right. Say it like this…” The teacher becomes the learner.

So, what I am dismayed by in this USA Today story is the little interactive poll that rests beside it. “Bilingual Babies: How do you feel about children learning multiple languages?” While I think that the poll itself offers some interesting choices, I am dismayed at the wording in the first choice of responses: “I’m happy with my child speaking English only.” The phrasing of this response uses rhetoric of the “English only” movement, one that is built on a type of linguistic intolerance that I don’t think we can afford. Besides the racist and classist undertones imbued within this view, it is just plain myopic for us to think that being monolingual will be suitable for our children (or, any of us, for that matter).

At any rate, I was having a conversation with a foreign language teaching colleague today and she was thrilled to hear about my daughter’s learning. Her simple response: “This is what experts in my field have been calling for for many, many years.” Keep the multiliterate classrooms coming, both in terms of their linguistic and technological diversities.

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